When I was a child, I read books about heroic figures defeating villains. Everyone had a distinct role to play, and everything was clear-cut. You were either good or evil, and that was that. I think it was only recently that I fully realized how wrong that imagery is when applied to real life. Sometimes heroes turn out to be villains. Sometimes you can’t trust what you think is good and right and solid. And it makes me despair for the world. Why can’t it work that way? Honesty and goodness has always been easy for me. Even when the truth is hard, surely keeping up a lie and living with it is harder in the long run, right?
There was nothing particularly special about that day, the day my world collapsed. I woke up, kissed my husband, Albert, goodbye, we both said our “I love you’s,” and I went to work. Fridays were somewhat rough for me, as I had just taken a second part time job and Friday was the second day of the three days of the week where I worked both jobs back to back. It was hard to adjust to, and I had remembered crying the first week, telling Albert that I didn't think I could do it. I was now working more hours than he did at his job, the same natural grocer chain where I worked. My body was adjusting, however, and I only had one more day of working both jobs before we were to go away to the beach on our seventh anniversary trip.
I gushed to my coworkers about it all day, how excited I was, where we were going to go, what we were going to do. That night I remembered we were out of bread so I bought a loaf. Albert did like his sandwiches.
I ascended the stairs to the small apartment in which we had lived for the past six years. We had been looking at houses, but then my student loan payments had recently doubled and I needed to make a year of full payments before I could get them reduced, which was why I had taken the second job.
I opened the door and saw him sitting at his computer desk. It was the place I generally found him when I got home.
“Hi!” I said, smiling. The sight of him had always made me smile. Seven years of marriage later and I still got butterflies in my stomach whenever he smiled at me. We had met online, gotten together nearly ten years ago, and he had come over from England to marry me. It all seemed like a fairy tale to me.
I went into the the dining room and set the bread on the table. Albert didn't respond, but he had gotten up and followed me to the table. It took several moments for me to realize something was wrong. He was wearing his coat and had his messenger bag slung over his shoulder. He grabbed me in a hug.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“No,” he said, his baritone voice thick with emotion.
He didn't say anything else. The hug went on for an uncomfortable amount of time. Something was incredibly wrong. Had someone died? My mind raced, a million hypothetical scenarios flooding through it at once.
“Darling, you're scaring me,” I said.
Finally he released me. I looked at him, and he looked away.
“As you know, Cara, I've been unhappy for a while now, and I've been seeing a therapist for a couple of weeks.”
As you know? I knew neither of these things, and as such, my eyes widened in confusion. “What? How long have you been unhappy?”
“For about a year. I've been talking to my therapist and she thinks it's a good idea for me to take some time to myself.”
The words hovered in the air, jumbled, my brain struggling to put them in order and make sense of them. Everything felt numb. I backed into the dining table in horror.
I asked the only question I could think of. “Does this mean you don't love me anymore?”
“I did,” he said.
I did.
I did.
The words bounced around in my head, struggling to gain purchase.
I found myself in the living room, not sure quite how I had gotten there. I made to sit on the couch, but sank to my knees beside it instead.
“Aww, I know, this must be hitting you like a ton of bricks,” he said in his best comforting tone, yet he made no move to comfort me. He stood several feet away.
Everything was playing out like a movie scene. I was someone else right now, surely. How did the people in the movies respond?
“Is there someone else?” I finally asked. That sounded about right.
“I'm not seeing anyone else,” he said. “Hand on heart!” And he gesticulated just that, for emphasis.
“I feel sick,” I said, clutching at the edge of the couch for support. My stomach churned. I waited to wake up. Surely I would wake up soon, and he'd be lying beside me. And he'd love me. He had to love me. Nothing made sense otherwise.
“Aww, I know,” he said in the same comforting tone. “You're feeling everything I've been feeling all last year.”
He still stood there, his eyes never quite settling on me. All traces of threatening tears had gone, and he now looked unsure of what expression he needed to be wearing.
“What about our beach trip? What about the reservation? What am I supposed to do?” There were far more important questions I could’ve asked, but I couldn’t help but blurt them out.
“Just ask your mom or one of your friends to go with you,” he suggested, in much the same casual way that one suggests a restaurant or a choice of apparel to a friend.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just feel like our personalities have been bouncing off each other lately.”
They had? I never felt like he was hard to talk to. I remembered joking with him, laughing until tears rolled down our faces, late night conversations that went on for hours. We’d recently taken a trip to Canada for his 30th birthday, and it was one of the happiest weeks of my life. He had never let on that it wasn’t for him.
“I just feel like you’re holding me back from what I really want in life, and our combined personalities just don’t inspire us to do anything to change our situation.”
“Because we don’t have a house yet?” I asked, tears streaming down my face. I knew my student loan debt bothered him, but that’s why I had taken steps to make sure we would be okay. It bothered me, too. I also had some heart problems several years ago that required regular cardiologist checkups, which were not cheap. Was I really that much of a burden to him?
“That’s part of it,” he said.
“Kids?” I asked. “Because I said I wasn’t ready to talk about kids until I turned thirty, and you said you were fine with that. I turned thirty almost a year ago, and you never brought it up.”
“I know,” he said. “Look, it’s just...it’s hard to put my feelings into words, all right?”
I honestly can’t remember what else we talked about, or even how much longer we talked. Maybe it was an hour, maybe only a few minutes. I thought vaguely about getting between him and the door and not letting him leave until he said he loved me again, but my legs didn’t seem to want to work.
At one point I remember him mentioning something about trying marriage counseling. It was just absurd. We always balked at the idea of counseling. We were best friends and we almost never fought. Marriage counseling was something other couples needed.
“Look,” Albert said finally, “I really have to go now. They’re waiting for me somewhere.”
“Who is?”
“Ellie, my therapist.”
I vaguely remembered her. She was in one of the many amateur theatre groups Albert was a part of.
“Ellie is your therapist?”
“Yes.”
“Who else is waiting for you?”
“Just some people, not sure who,” Albert mumbled. “I really need to go now.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m staying with Ellie,” he said. “She offered me her spare room.”
“You’re staying with your therapist?”
“I’m going to go now, okay?” was all Albert said. I could tell he was all out of things to say. I, on the other hand, still had a million questions.
“I don’t want you to go,” I said, “but...I also can’t even look at you right now.”
“I’ll be praying for you,” he said. “Pray for me, too, okay?”
As long as I live I will never forget what he said next. He said, “I’m not going to say goodbye. I’m just going to say goodnight, because this is not goodbye.”
Even in that moment part of me was wondering what play he’d stolen that line from. There was emotion in his voice again, but it didn’t seem genuine. It didn’t sound like him. He wasn’t himself. He wasn’t the Albert I knew.
He opened the door.
“I love you!” I said. Never before had I said those words with desperation and fear in my voice.
“I know.”
And then he was gone. At least I knew which movie he’d stolen that line from.
